Last year, Walt Kania of The Freelancery wrote a fantastic post called Follow your passion? Maybe not. Try this instead, and the whole “follow your passion” idea is one that I think about a lot. Some thoughts:
I love translating, writing and teaching, and I can’t imagine having a job where I was just warming the chair all day and waiting for quitting time. So in that sense, I agree that following your passion is a good thing: I’ve always loved languages, words and writing. However, I also think that if you want a satisfying quality of life, money has to enter into the equation somewhere. And somewhere, there’s an intersection between what you like to do and what people will pay money, or maybe even a lot of money for. So when I hear other translators comment that they fantasize about finding a job where they don’t have to sit in front of a computer all day, one of my standard suggestions is “If you like everything else about being a translator, raise your rates and work less, so that you can have more time to do whatever you want.”
Here’s another truth, at least as I see it. Lots of things are fun if, or because, you don’t have to depend on them to pay the bills. For example when I think about my non-work passions: crafting, gardening, cooking, mountain sports, to name a few, they are things from which I could potentially earn income. Case in point: I love to knit, and last year I made a series of ponchos, like the one Martha Stewart wore when she got out of jail. A few days ago I was wearing the one I made for myself, and a stranger asked me where I got it; then commented that I “could charge a lot of money” making them for other people. But here’s the thing: it’s not that I don’t want to earn money from crafting, it’s that part of why I find crafting relaxing is that I do it purely because I want to, not because I’m on a deadline or filling an order. Ditto for many of my other non-work passions; I love long-distance bicycle touring, and I’m sure that there are people making money running or leading those kids of tours. But for me, part of the mental release of being on my bike is that I literally don’t think about anything besides turning the cranks. I’m not stressing out about who’s having fun, who has a flat tire, and who can’t make it over the next pass. If I were leading bike tours just for fun, it might work, but I wouldn’t want to depend on it to buy groceries.
Around the same time as the poncho interaction, I went to see our financial planner, and he and I got to talking about this (following your passion, not knitting ponchos) as well. Interestingly enough, he had just read an article on a financial planning website that corroborated the “don’t follow your passion as a job; earn enough money that you can work less and have more time for the passion” philosophy. Apparently this referred to an unscientific study of people who quit their white-collar jobs to become rafting guides or rug weavers, or whatever their previous avocational interest was. And many of these people found that once the passion became their job, it was, well…a job. I would hazard a guess that in any type of job, there are many of the same stresses: meeting deadlines, meeting customers’ expectations, finding the energy and drive to pull rabbits out of hats when valued clients really need it. To me, my non-work passions provide the recharge that I need to work very hard at a job that I enjoy. But if given the choice between knitting all day and translating all day, I’d rather translate, make a bunch of money doing it, and then have the rest of my time free to knit, ski or grow flowers just because I want to.
Very insightful and too true! Thank you.
Greetings from interior Alaska
gri buongiorne
Thanks for sharing this, Corinne. It rings true to me. Am currently thinking of investing in a CAT tool to be able to work more efficiently and, consequently, have more spare time then. I’ll see if this works out.
Great post, Corinne! I think I’d go crazy if I had to convert to business everything I love doing. There should be something that we do purely for pleasure.
I wholeheartedly agree with this.
I agree too. I guess we can count ourselves lucky when we love our work *and* our play, but know the difference between the two 😉
Great article. I enjoyed reading it to the last letter.
Thanks for the great article, Corinne.
The reason a passion-turned-job loses its appeal is because extinsic rewards (i.e. money) reduce intrinsic motivation. A lot of social psychology research since the late 70s has shown this.
For example, let’s say a bunch of rowdy kids play street hockey every day in the alley next to your home, and their rowdiness annoys you. You really want them to stop. The surest way to make them quit? Start paying them a quarter a day to play in the alley. Why? They’ll stop doing it for fun and start doing it for the money, thus killing motivation.
To stay motivated, your job needs to be more than just about the money.
This interesting article comes just in time, in a moment of my life where your words touch deeply what I have been thinking lately. Indeed, It will help me to take a better decision…Thanks for sharing!
100% with you on this Corinne! Et merci pour cet article!
How important is to preserve our passions, Corinne!
I would add that you also need to find that topic you are passionate about to use it as a specialization. I think it’s very important to feel that your work helps the people or causes you believe in.
My non-work passions are singing, dancing and practicing Aikido. Music really helps me to eliminate the stress I accumulate throughout the day. It works like magic: I sing and/or dance two songs and I am ready to get back to translating at full speed.
Fernando
Very interesting reflection, but I see that you have a job that you enjoy allowing you to have that ‘perfect’ balance. But what if you hate your day job and see the ‘Hobby’ (translating in my case) as a possible escape…
I think we all probably have quite complex feelings about money. There’s fear of not being able to earn enough for basic subsistence, but even that comes in several shades: wondering how to pay next month’s bills, while expecting the year to work out ok, is different from being afraid you might never be able to make a proper living.
And then anything above what we consider to be a subsistence level also can have different emotional meanings. We may feel that it is part of the recognition of work well done and that we’ve deserved it: obviously we need that. Or we may have done a job that was easy money but that we didn’t feel was very worthwhile work, and getting that money may not make us feel so good; but having a bit of cash to spend makes most of us feel better than not having any. If we are getting other expressions of appreciation from clients, this function of the money as a form of recognition is less important. And so on.
It stands to reason that if you take something as complex as that and combine it with our feelings about certain activities that we may consider doing for money or not for money, there are going to be some ups and downs.
translation is one of the best freelance service which you can make extra money by doing it in home, that what i did couple of months ago i launched a website which is mainly targeted people in Dubai-UAE and jordan.
You can have a look : http://www.alkhouri-group.com
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